Cosmic Piety and Ecological Rationalityalcoberro.info/pdf/sginereco3.pdf · Both the threat of a ‘nuclear holocaust’ – to use the popular though inappropriate expression –

Cosmic Piety and EcologicalRationality

Salvador GinerInstitute of Advanced Social Studies, Barcelona

David TábaraInstitute of Advanced Social Studies, Barcelona

abstract: This article explores the growth of new forms ofworship as embodied in the ecological veneration of thecosmos. It shows how cosmic piety is becoming an essentialcomponent of modern culture in the current context ofglobalization, which frequently incorporates some crucialforms of rationality. Very often, the sacralization of natureappears to be a necessary precondition for the practice of eco-logical rationality given certain cognitive limitations andeveryday anxieties of large populations in the contemporaryworld. The rise and fall of an ecocentric or cosmocentricmythology are considered, together with its consequencesfor societal adaptation to global environmental change.

keywords: charisma ✦ cosmic myth ✦ ecological rationality ✦ecoreligion ✦ global environmental change ✦ mythology ✦

rationality ✦ religion

Introduction

Religions, whether new or long established, tend to absorb and reflect theconcerns and anxieties of their times. Even when they represent a flightfrom reality and advise their followers to seek refuge in otherworldly con-cerns, religions pass judgement upon, and somehow incorporate in them-selves, the conditions under which they arise and thrive. The ecologicalpreoccupations of our era have accordingly found a variety of responsesand incorporations into today’s diverse faiths and cults. More signifi-cantly, they have often been a powerful source of religious innovation.

International Sociology ✦ March 1999 ✦ Vol 14(1): 59–82SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

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In this article we are not interested in drawing up a taxonomy ofreligions according to the mode of their particular relationship to ecolog-ical concerns. Our purpose is rather to look at the incorporation of suchconcerns into the world of religious faith and action and, especially, to con-sider the significance of this phenomenon for the exercise of rationality.We intend to explore some of the rational components of ecoreligion andtheir repercussions in terms of social behaviour and policy formation asthey relate to global environmental change.

In order to do so, we focus our attention upon some religious responsesto global environmental change. The latter is only one aspect of ecologicalconcern, albeit a very important one. On the one hand, it entails modifi-cations that must be perceived by humans as cosmic, since environmentalchange is bound to be seen to affect the ultimate order of the earthly uni-verse. This, in turn, must necessarily affect religious docrine as well assecular ideological, political and philosophical conceptions. On the otherhand, it implies serious world environment modifications which arebound to have repercussions on our conceptions of what constitutesrational action and a rational social order.

Our article intends to explore the relationship between these two differ-ent aspects of the cultural situation produced by the rise of popularconcern with widespread environmental change, now widely perceivedas a threat or risk for the first time.1 It also draws some conclusions aboutthe rationality (or otherwise) of religious ecobeliefs and ecoreligion as wellas about the rationality (or otherwise) of the conduct inspired or pre-scribed by them.

Our analysis is based on a notion of the rational components of somenon-rational or, rather, meta-rational, beliefs. For that purpose we putforward the concept of a ‘rational charisma’ as well as that of ‘charismaticrationality’. It is our intention to argue that the spread of what we call‘cosmic piety’ (a component of ecoreligion) is a necessary (though ob-viously not sufficient) condition for the popular implementation of eco-logically rational behaviour when humankind is confronted with thepernicious consequences of a destructive process of global environmentalchange.

Ecoreligions

Several religions, old and new, and religious movements have incorpor-ated the growing ecological concerns of our times into them, each aftertheir manner (Prades, 1987). And nearly all faiths, at least in the West,have had to cope with the new ecological consciousness. In the East,environmental and nature-related issues are being used also to reaffirmtheir religious identities in a new manner (Pedersen, 1995). While for some

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the looming ecological crisis has been considered to be a secondarydevelopment hardly needing doctrinal accommodation, for most others ithas been deemed crucial. It now dwells at the core of several religious con-ceptions and has become a part of a variety of cults and rituals. In somecases, it has become the structuring element of that core, even if the newfaith itself – ecoreligion – is essentially disorganized and diffuse. Eco-religion is not a single faith: it is shared by more than one religion. It formsa common ground. In some cases, it may be quite peripheral within onescheme of things religious, within a clear-cut tradition. In others, however,ecoreligion may be at the core of a given faith. That is the case, for instance,of that very symptomatic amalgam of doctrines and attitudes which goesunder the label of New Era. For the ‘religious culture’ represented by theNew Era faith and its attendant cults, the pious understanding of theworld in terms of ecological equilibrium is of the essence. This usuallygoes together with a monistic view of human nature and the universe, anda cult relationship towards life and the world, no matter which branchesor versions of this widespread and nebulous conception are subscribed toby each particular group of faithful (Vernette, 1993).

A general sociological account of the rise of ecoreligion in the contem-porary world need not be attempted here. For the purposes of our analy-sis we may confine ourselves to identifying, however sketchily, some ofthe developments which have given rise to ecoreligions or forced estab-lished religions to respond to the risks of global environmental change.2In doing so we leave out political, economic and sociostructural com-ponents and concentrate on a few of the more symbolic, doctrinal and cul-tural characteristics of the new religious situation. Such characteristicscould be summed up as follows, grouped under four distinct thematicheadings.

Environmental AnxietyReligions provide solutions to fear and, very especially, solutions to fearresulting from mysterious and unknown, though often well-founded,threats. (Obviously, religions are other things as well: no reductionism isintended by recalling this ancient assumption here.) Harmful changes inthe global environment – including the possible collapse of the life systemthat sustains us – are, in one sense, utterly new. Although humankind haswitnessed bouts of millenarianism before, the modern threat possessessome qualities that were lacking in former ‘end of the world’ grandespeurs.3 True, the new ‘great fear’ is not altogether different from the recentgeneral fear of an atomic or nuclear universal disaster which immediatelypreceded it. Both the threat of a ‘nuclear holocaust’ – to use the popularthough inappropriate expression – and the supposedly impending eco-logical cataclysm share one characteristic: they are seen as man-made, as

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perils that could be averted by humans, through action and policy, and notby incantation and prayers alone. As the nuclear warfare threat is felt torecede, environmental disaster tends to occupy its space. But it does notdisplace it altogether. It rather tends to incorporate environmental fearsinto the new vision of global risk. Global risk perception now includes(since Three Mile Island, but more obviously since Chernobyl) nuclearmishaps, understood as episodes in a worsening environmental situation.This is provoked less by nuclear technology itself than by profoundgeneral misconceptions about our exploitation of nature and its resources,of which such technology is only a manifestation.

In the past, chiliastic movements often pointed to human sinfulness ordisobedience to divine will as a cause for apocalypse. A sense of guilt forsinful transgression of natural laws is shared by ecoreligion.4 Atonementfor the latter, however, now entails a distinctly new kind of behaviourtowards the natural world and its resources. The austere life of stoics orpuritans of all ages referred first and foremost to their own salvation asbelievers. It did not directly include the environment as such, much lessthe wider world or even the cosmos, felt to be utterly beyond the reach ofhuman misdemeanours. Anxiety now stems from a persistent flow ofinformation as variously interpreted by scientists, intellectuals, journalistsand ideology-mongers about a possible end to earthly survival preciselyas a consequence of such misdemeanours. Their effects are therefore nolonger circumscribed to the immediately surrounding environment.Global change is now seen as a consequence of human action. The humanenvironment has expanded, and the universe around us has shrunk in pro-portion to our capacities to reach out to increasingly more distant placesor to have recourse to ever new resources. Their growing scarcity is theconsequence of our conduct.

Most of the opinion-makers that put forward these views are utterlysecular in their discourse. The response, however, is often religious. Con-trary to traditional assumptions about rational discourse – inherited fromthe Enlightenment period – there is no reason why a nuanced, critical,secular and complex presentation of problems and solutions will not elicita religious response in many quarters, especially if it involves a messagethat is bound to provoke a great deal of popular anxiety and fear.

The Imperatives of Scientific DiscourseThe notion that the rise of a scientific worldview and the spread ofrationalism do not necessarily displace religion and magic has long beenaccepted. Religions, nonetheless, have had to come to terms with thehegemony of science and with a great deal of secularization. Some havehad recourse to the invocation of science and its claims to truth by imply-ing scientificity in their very names (Christian Science, Scientology), others


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have engaged in an ongoing process of a not altogether easy accommo-dation with science (Catholic theology), while still others have paradoxi-cally grown, as it were, on the fertile soil provided by scientific hegemony.Several forms of ecoreligion fall within this last category. They arereligions for which the natural world (and humankind as an inseparablepart of it) is a numinous entity, an object of pious care and a chief bearerof charisma. Yet, at the same time, they are religions that base their worldpicture on their own interpretation of the hypotheses and the data (seenas ‘facts’) that botanists, biologists, cosmologists, astronomers, demogra-phers and many other professionals steadily supply.

Immersion in science information does not mean that such religions arescientific. Only science is scientific. Ecoreligions are often, instead, scien-tistic and, more often than not, only express themselves in a languagereminiscent of science or pretending to be scientific. They are, neverthe-less, often prone to have recourse to scientific or technical bits of infor-mation, according to felt needs. Yet, the use of such bits is often lessarbitrary than may appear. Science-prone ecoreligions are avid consumersof research ‘discoveries’ and new scientific information. They are on thewhole much readier than most traditional religions to incorporate andrecast the constant flow of scientific news and opinions.

Ecoreligions remain religions but legitimize themselves through a sortof scientific discourse. Although the origins of this stance can be found inseveral Enlightenment cults (Freemasonry, but also Theism and Deism),that were clearly embodied later in Theosophy and other religions, thecontemporary expression of the trend, especially related to globalenvironmental change, can be found in the mystical-scientific specu-lations of a Teilhard de Chardin but, very explicitly, in now ‘classical’statements such as Marilyn Ferguson’s, in the 1970s. It was through themthat the scientific imperative – the need for a thoroughly modern religiousdiscourse to claim to be anchored also in science – found its oracles andprophets among scientists with particular leanings towards the religiousview of the cosmos, as well as among some science journalists and certainintellectuals ready to work on the necessary amalgam, syncretic productor synthesis, as the case may be. Barry Commoner, Paul Ehrlich, FritjofCapra and, again, Ferguson, are by now emblematic names in thisunprecedented cultural process: the infusion of science into ecoreligion.Pantheism, organicism, ecological ‘interrelationism’ and human identifi-cation with the natural world became necessary ideological prerequisitesfor the ecoreligious view of the world to the extent that for Thomas Berry,often referred to as the most important Catholic thinker in the field of eco-logical theology and defender of the need for ecoreligion, we can find inour genetic coding ‘the context of our relationship with the divine’ (Berry,1988: 196).


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Cosmocentrism and EcocentrismEcoreligions have shifted their sense of awe and piety from God, the gods,the supernatural forces and human beings towards the cosmos itself, orthe creation. The specific form of veneration, or cosmic piety, which char-acterizes them does not mean, however, that the traditional supernaturalforces have vanished from view, only that there has been a reordering ofperceptions and a new hierarchy of religious powers: the dormant spiritor spirits of the natural world have been resurrected and come to the fore.(This may be interpreted as a new form of animism, though such a verdictdoes not seem to apply to every expression of cosmic piety. Yet, neo-animism can be clearly detected in some modern Earth cults and certainlyin the discourse of many ecoideologists.)

The now prominent role bestowed upon the cosmos, or more often, tothe Earth itself, has produced far-reaching consequences in the ecoreligiousunderstanding of humankind. Thus, the trend towards monism, or therejection of traditional dualism (whether Christian or Cartesian) has beenvery pronounced. Ever since Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis was put forwardin 1979 the potential for it to become a firm (religious) belief rather than anattractive (scientific) hypothesis became evident. (The very name given byJames Lovelock to the Earth, that of a Greek goddess, Gaia, the MotherEarth or Mother Nature of the ancients, established the religious connec-tion.) The deference and piety which ecoreligions, already in the making,began to show for all forms of life was easily extended to a planet now seenas a pulsating, living organism. Although until then human beings had tra-ditionally been conceived as mere specks in the immensity of the cosmos,some religious traditions, by endowing them with an immortal soul, hadassigned them a very prominent place in the universe. For its part, a crucialwestern philosophical tradition, by attributing reason and moral con-science to humans, also assigned them a kind of centrality in the order ofthings. Precedents for the current relegation of humankind to a far moremodest place in that order, as well as for cosmocentrism and an Earth cult,can be found in many kinds of historical animism as well as in several pan-theistic theories. (The preoccupation of ecophilosophers with the work ofSpinoza is highly symptomatic in this respect.) Nonetheless, what isdescribed as crucial about the new cosmic pieties is their decisive shift ofattention from the human being, as the chief object of speculation andstudy, and even from God, as an object of worship, to nature.5

The fact that the human being’s importance as a religious animal hasshifted towards the background in the new scheme does not mean,however, that ecoreligions have assigned her or him no responsibility:humans are still seen as responsible (and therefore free, and also sinful?)for today’s ecological predicament and are given the task (the divinecommandment?) to redeem the sacred natural world from its impending


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end by either mending their ways, or by a radical transformation, con-verting to ecoreligion or, in a more secular cultural approach, to ecophi-losophy. Even in this latter, secular, case, cosmic piety makes its forcefulappearence. Thus the Deep Ecology movement explicitly prescribes ven-eration towards nature as part of the new ethics it deems necessary for themoral transformation it propounds in human beings and society (Naess,1973, 1989).

Social Limits to Rational and Analytic ExplanationThe sacralization of scientific discourse on the ecological predicament andthe incorporation of its hypotheses and arguments into new-fangled cults,faiths and rituals may be interpreted in traditional terms as an inevitablecultural process whereby the popularization of complex theories encoun-ters grave difficulties. According to this view, endemic popular ignorancemakes it impossible for the majority to gain an unemotional, rational andwell-informed view of any sophisticated interpretation of an intricate situ-ation. Only ideologies and religions are able to convey, thereby oversim-plifying or distorting them, certain higher truths to a majority that canonly dimly understand them, if at all.6 Mass culture and the media havenot only been incapable of breaking the endemic limitations of the popularmind, but have aggravated its predicament by vulgarizing, oversimplify-ing and making banal the issues. The paternalistic and, indeed, anti-demo-cratic undertones of such opinions are all too obvious, even though theremay be more than a half-truth in some of them, for instance in the stan-dard views about the low quality of the mass media.

There may be, however, important limits to the societal diffusion ofcomplex scientific arguments which stem from sources other than theimagined obtuseness of the wider public. In the first place, the expansionof scientific knowledge and the coming of the so-called information orknowledge society has made it well nigh impossible for the best educatedand the most sophisticated minds to grasp and explain to themselves indetail a great number of phenomena which are clear only to particular sec-tions of the scientific, scholarly or philosophical communities. Scientificand technical explanations are thus taken on trust, not only by the publicat large, but also by restricted publics and intellectual elites. In the secondplace, the hypothesis must now be taken seriously that, no matter howhigh the intelligence, the rational dispositions and the originality of ahuman being’s mind, she or he will also show, as part of her or his veryhumanity, a religious inclination – including a need for metaphoricalthinking and an attachment to myths. A tenable homo religiosus approach,however, must explicitly admit wide varieties in the intensity andmanifestations of these dispositions. At any rate, the tendency for the mostknowledgeable among us to form ‘conceptual complexes’ expressed in


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non-examined beliefs and attitudes is too evident to need much discussionin the present context. There are individual and social limits to a thoroughanalytical and rational explanation of reality. We also know that an indi-vidual’s rational practices in one field (for instance, science) are no hin-drance to her or his embracing emotional and transcendent loyalities, ascontemporary nationalism abundantly illustrates. Max Weber’s insistenceon the cold barrenness of scientific attempts to explain and conveymeaning (and charisma) have found a ready echo (if not always acknow-ledged) among those ecotheorists who emphasize the incapacity of sciencein its contemporary abstraction to grasp and transmit reality itself.

Global environmental change towards an alarming worsening of the con-ditions of human life hides considerable complexities. Not all of them canbe understood by each and every member in every intellectual community,let alone the vast citizenry of democratic countries where an open andinformed debate can take place. What is crucial in this respect, neverthe-less, is that such change can be comprehended rationally in its basic linea-ments and that, once thus understood, it is bound to affect favourably someelementary tendencies in humankind towards self-preservation. But these,in turn, do not exist in a psychic void: they are grounded in our emotionalmakeup, and directly linked to our religious and ideological dimension,our tendency to express a synthetic (non-analytical), reverential and,indeed, pious attitude toward forces that transcend us as well as a corre-sponding hostility against those that are perceived to militate against enti-ties endowed by us with charisma – entities deserving our reverence.

These seem to be some of the preconditions upon which the rise ofreligions, worldviews and ideologies (as well as much scientific and philo-sophical enquiry) linked to global environmental change is now occurring.Let us turn now to a more detailed examination of their general assump-tions and content in order to open the way for our chief argument aboutthe nature of the new cosmic piety and its relationships to both rationalityand natural charisma today.

Charisma, Reason and Ecology

Cosmic PietyThe development of a non-anthropocentric worldview and the upsurge ofa quasi-religious veneration of natural icons in the form of a new globalanimistic myth have been the result of a long historical process. The feelingand practice of a ‘cosmic piety’ constitute a large-scale emotional, mysticand, often, pseudo-scientific attempt by western societies to grasp theultimate meaning of most relationships between human existence, thenatural world and the universe. Its origins may be traced to the sympath-etic reflections on plants and animals put forward by Saint Francis of


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Assisi in the 13th century and to the Galilean defence of the Copernicanastronomical system. Since then, many Biblical ideas on these issues havebeen increasingly questioned and replaced to the point that, at present,within the Christian tradition, voices can be heard to the effect that thescience of ecology will also have consequences for the theology of revel-ation: it will mean, for them, that ‘we will slowly come to recognize thatwe are more likely to encounter the transcendent presence of God in thenatural world than in that of the Bible or the church’ (Collins, 1995: 10).

Cosmic piety breaks with Biblical assumptions in at least three senses.First, it affirms that the human presence on Earth neither constitutes thereason for the existence of the universe nor is the measure of everything;second, it sees the human species as interconnected with, and not par-ticularly different from, other living beings; and third, science and com-munion with the Earth are seen as means of approaching the ultimateforces that make sense of the universe and of the humans’ place in it.Theories and discoveries in astronomy, geology, geography and, mostrecently, ecology have drawn a very different picture of the cosmos thanthat announced in the Old Testament. Accordingly, it has become moredifficult than ever to support the view that the Earth and all its specieswere created independently, in six days. The theory of evolution advancedby Darwin delivered the final blow to static Biblical assertions on theorigins and dynamics of the natural world. Darwin not only explained thereasons for the variations within the natural world but also provided thebasis for discrediting the predominant view that the human species heldan exceptional and independent character above all other life forms. Forthe first time in the history of western social thought, the evolution of theentire diversity of life forms, including the human one, could be explainedin secular terms.

This new general picture of life and nature was in part the direct con-sequence of developments in positivist science. But the new western sensi-tivity to the natural world was not merely a product of scientists andnaturalists (Nash, 1983; Worster, 1985). It also originated as a counter-cultural urban movement against industrialism which was, at first, par-ticularly acute in the Anglo-Saxon world in the 18th century. From thenonwards, utilitarian, ideological and aesthetic movements, linked to thegrowth of the urban population and the huge transformation of the landin both Europe and the USA, converged into a radically new conceptionin the way the natural world was perceived. The ‘wilderness’ was nolonger seen as essentially inhospitable, nor as a world prone to lead totemptation and sin. Wild, untrodden areas became symbols for a set ofemerging liberal, nationalist and romantic values where one could stillfind the possibility of escaping from industrial society, feel the grandeur ofone’s country, or experience an intimacy with the pristine order of a


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vanishing paradise. Within the urban environment and landscape, manyelements of a newly tamed nature – trees, animals, plants – were endowedwith human and sentient qualities (Thomas, 1983). In the 20th century, thisnew way of looking at the natural world was not only strengthened by thefurther development of the natural sciences but particularly by severalevents in the decades after the Second World War. Thus public perceptualchange was fuelled by information technology, images of the Earth fromthe space and news about rising risks of atomic energy and looming eco-logical disasters. Widespread anxiety about the new array of new environ-mental dangers was spurred on and given shape by the efforts made by anumber of new sages. In turn, Rachel Carson, Barry Commoner, PaulEhrlich or the Club of Rome provided some of the first rational bases thatinspire many current environmental movements all over the world.

However, all these conceptions and theories (mostly presented in ascientific garb, or even based on solid scientific findings) also left un-resolved several metaphysical issues. They stimulated new forms ofaccepted agnosticism and uncertainty about the ultimate rules that governthe natural world, human society and the cosmos in general. But, by thesame token, they created the conditions and the need to fill the explana-tory gaps with religious and pseudo-religious beliefs and attitudes. Thusmany of the contemporary notions, festivals and rituals related to Gaiashow that many of the non-rational components of the new way of seeingnature and the Earth have not been replaced by the positivist predominanttradition. On the contrary, new forms of non-scientific belief haveappeared, albeit sometimes not necessarily hostile to the scientific or therational mind. The recognition that life on Earth will not end with theextinction of the human species soon opened the way to a new humanexperience of cosmic existence. In this sense, the development of ecologyas a science has affected the meaning of the transcendent. Now ‘life’ afterdeath is less dependent on prayers inside a church building and more onoutdoor activities designed to save the planet.

In addition, usually ecoreligious advocates believe in ‘cosmodicy’, theassumption that in the long run nature will impose its own rules and thatenvironmentally sound behaviour (including a ritually correct behaviour,sin-free or free of transgressions against nature) will be rewarded with somesort of cosmic justice. The infringement of the ‘Laws of Nature’ by the arro-gance and carelessness of human societies will, at the end, result in humanspaying a toll. The analysis provided by George Perkings Marsh of the eco-logical causes of the decadence of ancient civilizations and the statement ofthe four laws of ecology by Barry Commoner are examples of this belief.

Cosmic piety, besides, entails the idea that humans inhabit and sharetheir place within a bounded unity. Alfred Crosby (1986) argues that manybeliefs, institutions and lifestyles of the Europeans were reinforced and


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extended by virtue of their biological expansion to the rest of the world.In part, this recovered the Christian myth that the believers would berewarded with the multiplication of bread and fish or, in other words, withlimitless resources. But it has also brought with it an unexpected result(necessary for the current ecoreligious myth): the nearly complete explor-ation of the globe followed by serious ecological breakdowns in the formercolonies has led many in the West to a conception of nature as a fragileand bounded entity which humans have the responsibility to safeguard.7

Those who embrace cosmic beliefs often feel that they demand a greatpersonal effort, that they must act in an environmentally sound way, as anessential part of their personal ethics. Many of them often experience pre-viously some sort of ‘ecological conversion’. This implies a radical changein the way the natural world is valued by them, including their percep-tion of its beauty. Once ecological conversion has occurred, the individualcapacities to perceive and distinguish the processes affecting the environ-ment improve. But above all, ecological conversion entails a discovery ofthe charismatic meaning of the ‘interrelatedness’ of all beings on Earth.8Most of the chief ecological thinkers have given an account of particularmoments in their lives in which this ideological transformation took place.Aldo Leopold (1949: 129–30) expressed his conviction that in every livingthing there existed a ‘deeper meaning, known only to the mountain itself’when he looked into the eyes of a dying wolf that he and his colleagueshad shot by mistake. In a similar vein, for Lewis Mumford the total col-lapse of the planet will only be avoided if an organic, all-embracing world-view of life, as depicted by Darwin, is adopted and understood by themajority of the world in an almost religious way. In his opinion, for ‘itseffective salvation mankind will need to undergo something like a spon-taneous religious conversion: one that will replace the mechanical worldpicture with an organic world picture’ (Mumford, 1964: 413). Ecologicalconversions also occur in people who call themselves agnostics or evenatheists. It can be produced by an unconscious progressive awareness ofchanges in the natural world or, more frequently, by a sudden experienceor image that remains for years at the back of one’s mind. An emotionalpersonal event not explained in rational terms can be enough to lead tothe personal transformation produced by conversion.

The sense of grievance expressed by some important western bodies ofopinion when seeing a species vanish or a part of the world becomingincreasingly polluted or overcrowded constitutes a strong emotional forcethat can often be translated into wide popular support for environmentalclaims. However, most western urban dwellers can only experience theloss of some charismatic species and the destruction of some of the lastremaining wild places of the planet through the media. Usually it is thedistant images of bleeding whales and seal pups, wandering albatrosses


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killed by trawl-lines or burning rain forests which trigger the first per-ception of the anthropic processes affecting the global environment andthe subsequent anxiety facilitating conversion to cosmic piety. Theseorigins of quasi-religious Earth beliefs and values can rarely be explainedonly in traditional rational terms as they remain in the territory of thecharisma and myth where human emotions come close to religious atti-tudes or indeed become such, leading in some cases to concerted socialaction or inspiring political movements.9

Ecoconverts manifest their cosmic piety in a multitude of differentsecular private and public manners. Thus ecological asceticism is followedby people who declare themselves agnostics, atheists or radical rational-ists. It can be practised at home, at work or at leisure, or when enjoying ameal, using private or public transport, or going out with friends.Although the social expressions of ecoreligion vary in different contextsand societies, it is in the wilderness where the myths which demandcosmic piety can best be experienced and where the individual can ‘learn’more about the transcendent meaning of life and its natural forms. Essen-tially, it needs a recognition of charismatic properties in the natural world.The sociological definition of charisma points to this recognition in certainpeople, objects or symbols. But charisma can be extended to nations,tribes, natural sites or, as in the present case, to nature itself. The diffusionof charisma – in our case its attribution to something as large as nature –may create problems of analysis (and, indeed, also problems of worship!)but it does not obliterate it as an identifiable phenomenon (Shils, 1975;Giner, 1996).

Ecoreligion needs not only practices but also sacred, charismatic placeswhich can represent the ideal state of nature in the midst of an evil,human-driven global environmental change that ought to be reversed. Assymbols, such sacred places hold an enormous informative and edu-cational value for both present and future generations. Nowhere betterthan in the wild can the practice of cosmic piety be put into effect. But mostimportantly, the new charisma of the wild holds a rational component atleast to the extent that it may contribute to the common good. Thus, thepiety it demands may help prevent some of the worst effects of globalenvironmental change. Environmental historian William Cronon, whorecognizes the wilderness as being his ‘own religion’, characteristicallybelieves that

. . . the language we use to talk about wilderness is often permeated withspiritual and religious values that reflect human ideals far more than thematerial world of physical nature. Wilderness fulfills the old romantic projectof secularizing Judeo-Christian values so as to make a new cathedral not insome petty human building but in God’s own creation, Nature itself. Manyenvironmentalists who reject traditional notions of the Godhead and who


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regard themselves as agnostics or even atheists nonetheless express feelingstantamount to religious awe when in presence of wilderness. . . . The autonomyof nonhuman nature seems to me an indispensable corrective to human arro-gance. . . . In reminding us of the world we did not make, wilderness can teachprofound feelings of humility and respect as we confront our fellow beings andthe earth itself. (Cronon, 1996: 16–23)

It might then be the case that people’s communion with, and awe of, themyth demanding cosmic piety from its faithful entails an importantrational component, necessary if we are to find alternative answers toprevent the worst outcomes of a human-driven global environmentalcrisis.

We now turn to the important sociological task of explaining in whichsense a charismatically embedded rationality may be necessary for such afar-reaching change of direction.10

Ecological RationalityWe are examining some relevant implications of the concept of global eco-logical rationality. We argue that this new form of rationality will succeedsocietally only if a thorough reconstruction of local beliefs and pieties, notjust manners, about nature, entailing ecological rationality, is achieved ona large scale. Global ecological rationality, if it ever manages to take rootas a generalized popular attitude, will emerge from the radical trans-formation of particular cultural (and religious) contexts of action in whichmany of the current contradictions between means and goals, the local andthe global, and the opposition between human and the natural worldoccur.11 It is our contention that this new rationality will not be achievedonly by entirely secular means: to be successful it needs to be embodiedinto widespread expressions of cosmic piety. Let us now look at thereasons why this is so.

Concern about global environmental problems differs between socialcontexts and groups, and so does its meaning.12 A plurality of meaningsabout environmental issues and the understanding of the personalrelationships that people maintain with their global environment alsoresults in a multiplicity of local rationalities. For some, trying to save eitherthe planet or even our backyard, within our modern unsustainablesocieties is just an impossible aspiration. For others, on the contrary, tobehave environmentally soundly is the only rational and realistic option(Mitchell, 1979). Likewise, to believe in global environmental changemight lead people into thinking that sometimes it is worthwhile to investtime, money and effort into personal actions to mitigate environmentaldestruction, in spite of other people’s indifference, or the opinion thatglobal environmentalism is a threat to world order. Expressions aboutenvironmental issues have been intrinsically ambivalent from their very


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beginning and have always evolved amid opposing views or dualities ofopinion, often in mutual conflict (Lowenthal, 1990).

The practice of a form of rationality coherent with global environmentalgoals depends on specific social and historical contexts which are often atodds with the social situation in which they emerge. To a certain degreeecological rationality is a result of the cultural consequences of the massivecontemporary urbanization and industrialization: they have created, inturn, the optimal conditions that undermine the basis of their success andhave thus stimulated the rediscovery of nature and the awareness aboutglobal change. In addition, the worldwide spread of western institutions,economy and culture and the increasing application of interdisciplinaryscience and ethics into international relations have laid bare an increasingnumber of socioenvironmental contradictions and stimulated new waysof looking at them.

Global environmental change poses a considerable number of questionsboth about the rationality of dominant societal goals and about the ration-ality of the means to achieve them. With a standard Weberian argument,it can be shown that the rationalization of the world and the applicationof the scientific approach to many spheres of social action has also led tonew forms of irrationality: these have been particularly acute in respect ofthe human relationships within the natural world. The pursuit of a com-plete mastery of nature through the sole means of formal rationality is initself an irrational aspiration. Raymond Murphy believes that the ‘loss ofawareness of human ignorance and of the recognition that humans mustadapt to nature has been a particularly irrational cultural consequence ofrationalization’ (Murphy, 1994: 39).

Ecology, in relation to goals, modifies the idea of rationality, at least inthe sense that social rational actions should not go against human adap-tation to our life-support systems.13 In this sense, it is often argued that, inthe last resort, reasons for behaving wholly rationally cannot be anythingbut ecological. The problem, however, is how to define in non-ambiguousterms what ‘ecological’ really means. Many different, evolving and con-flicting rationalities are at stake when dealing with global environmentalproblems. Great difficulties arise when trying to identify what gives socialaction a rational ecological character. According to a well-known opinion,ecological goals can be set either in ‘deep’ or ‘shallow’ terms. Although itis possible to aim for a less anthropocentric ecological rationality than isusually the case with humans (i.e. a ‘deeper’ one), an entirely non-anthropocentric rationality can also be interpreted as another form ofirrationality. This easily shows the intimate but always delicate relation-ships which obtain between rationality and ethics, for many actions canbe simply labelled ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’ depending on the moral valuesof the observer.


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To a great extent, however, ecological rationality expresses morals,morals that incorporate ecological values. Global biodiversity policies, forinstance, can follow dramatic alternative courses of action depending onwhich moral goals are pursued. They depend on whether their aim is toprotect non-human beings for their intrinsic or extrinsic value, or whetherthe reason to grant moral standing to natural objects is their capacity tofeel, flourish or simply belong to an interdependent biotic community. Theideal of sustainability can be seen as an attempt to overcome these value-laden appreciations and to bring together diverse economic, social andecological rationalities. However, the concept of sustainability itself,which is often presented as the most rational goal against which social,economic and political institutions should evaluate their rationality, is notexempt from sharp contradictions or ambiguities (Barbier, 1987; Redclift,1987; IUCN/UNEP/WWF, 1991; WCED, 1987). Many of the elements thatdefine the notion of sustainability – future needs, the carrying capacity ofecosystems, energy-information relationships and such like – are essen-tially unknown. Accordingly, in order to decide whether a particular strat-egy of social action is sustainable or not, a non-rational element has to beincorporated.14 In fact, as Caldwell points out, human societies as they aretoday can be sustained for the short term only at the cost of further greatenvironmental degradation. Therefore, only either political or ethicaldecisions, or both, about which level of environmental quality we want toachieve, and by what means of social control, can ever overcome the con-tradictions generated by this puzzling situation (Caldwell, 1990).

The quest for an ecological rationality also casts serious doubts on thelogic of the means to achieve current social goals. The processes thatmould situational perceptions and determine the selection of individualand collective choices that affect present and future global ecosystems areshaped by the structure of economic, political and cultural institutionswhose form and direction have nothing to do with the issues we now con-front. For example, the current monetary accounting system may be seenas the most irrational means of valuing our increasingly scarce naturalresources; the four-year election procedure so favoured by several moderndemocracies can be viewed as an entirely inappropriate political arrange-ment for the necessary enforcement of long-term sustainable ecopolicies;for its part, the urban, commercial and technological culture of modernsocieties – including the all-pervasive use of the private automobile – canbe thought to have deeply damaging repercussions for the natural world,not to speak of the social fabric in many countries. Therefore, again, theirrationality of all these institutions must be gauged in relation to theirinadequacy to ecological goals, many of which, in turn, possess an essen-tially ethical or non-rational content.

Increasing specialization, widespread bureaucratization and the rise of


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the information society have meant that modern rationalities are mouldedwithin a more limited, specialized and often reductionist context of action.In modern technological societies, the gap between the globalization ofinformation and the localization of action has grown to such an extent thatmaking rational sense of the relationship between global problems andlocal actions becomes for a great part of the lay public more a task of faithand hope than one of finding objective sources of knowledge. The logic ofpersonal decisions is limited by the availability of complex informationabout different possible global futures. Many people have finally becomeacutely aware of global environmental perils: many now know about thedangers to the ozone layer or about pernicious climate changes. But mostfeel impotent or incapable of dispensing with those facilities (their ownprivate automobile, for instance) that damage or undermine the naturalfabric. Under such conditions, mythical or charismatic sources of know-ledge and discipline may come into their own. In fact, they already inspiremuch environmentally friendly social behaviour. Once more, rationalbeliefs and rational conduct may be embodied in charisma and evenmyths. Neither are always irrational in every sense. Cosmic piety may be,and often is, an essentially rational response (especially in sociostructuralterms) to the needs of humankind vis-a-vis a fragile environment, whichwe need to preserve if we wish to preserve the human race.

We are not saying that cosmic piety is the only way to spread environ-mentally rational beliefs and behaviour among the populace. Rather thatit is an extremly powerful means of doing so among people less prone tocertain forms of secular, analytical and rational thought. Besides, spreadof a cosmic piety embodied in a variety of religious or semi-religious cults,or in political ideologies, together with the spread of mores and folkwaysleading to good ecological manners – recycling of products, energy-savinghabits and so forth – has thus shed light upon some global environmentalprocesses. It has instigated a reformulation of current rationalities and hashelped make people believe that some previously accepted goals andmeans were not as good for the good life as they thought. In this context,Barlett has pointed out that ‘ecological reasoning has its roots in an eco-logical metaphysics, a world view with its own distinctive ethic, assump-tions, and metaphors that direct the interpretation of reality and theapplication of logic to choices’ (Barlett, 1986: 230). Myths may provideknowledge about different courses of action, and the truth of such know-ledge may often be objectively confirmed by more independent, scientifi-cally informed observers. Since ecomyths make sense of social andenvironmental relationships, they also constitute a primary source ofsocial environmental change.15

Specialized contexts of action find it difficult to integrate outside know-ledge of change unless it is presented with their own language of motives


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(Wright Mills, 1940). Cosmic piety provides the universal language thatcan be integrated in diverse institutions and situations. For this reason itcan be considered to have an invaluable cultural role in the commonpursuit to adapt human societies to global environmental change.16

Evidently, other structural conditions besides culture need to change:the right legislation and education are obvious elements of such con-ditions. Adequate changes in values and beliefs might have considerableimpact on the willingness to act in an environmentally sound way butthese are limited by other social, political and economic forces (Gardnerand Stern, 1995). In the present article, however, we have only dealt withsome elements that can increase awareness and stimulate sound environ-mental practices at the local level in relation to global environmentalchange. We have argued that the ecological character of rationality ishighly determined by its ethical values; that there are as many rationali-ties that deal with global environmental change as different situations inwhich individuals carry out their actions; and that the sources of this newglobal rationality, that many think necessary in order to adapt to the newsituation, must be found in a set of beliefs and attitudes which emergedin densely corporatist and specialized societies in the form of a planetarymyth leading to a form of natural awe and ritualism we have called‘cosmic piety’. Some of these practices, we insist, are not rational by anymeans but neither are they necessarily irrational. Their rationality isclearly manifested if we consider that their ultimate goals and conse-quences are cogent with the goal of a continuation of the flourishing ofhuman life in the framework of a better society.

Paradoxically, however, if we do accept that cosmic piety has had, andstill has, an outstanding cultural role to play in the ongoing difficult processof human adaptation to global environmental change, we should also beaware of the problematic, even dim future that awaits it in the long run.

A Conclusion: The Tragedy of Ecoreligion

The more substantial aspects of cosmic piety will eventually die. A brightfuture still awaits it but, like many religions, its mythical contents willeventually vanish, while its more behavioural aspects may still remainwith us or, rather, with future generations. The ecological ethic will thussurvive the spirit of the corresponding religious beliefs that inspired itin many quarters. The paradox of ecoreligion – its tragedy, to echo anexpression Simmel used for modern culture – may be that, born as it wasas a response to the rise of science and the intensive use of technology, itwill also perish by the continued spread of scientific knowledge. Wedo not subscribe to the simple view that, as science grows, so shrinksreligion: we have shown that the opposite may be the case. The mutual


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relationship between science and religion is certainly intricate. In the caseof the environment, and particularly in that of global change, both haveclaims to make upon it, albeit of a very different kind. To make matterseven more complex, science and religion have been indirectly connectedto each other through their respective concern for the cosmos and theirparticular stances before it. As we saw, and putting it simply, science con-tributed to the rise of ecoreligion. Yet, science itself will eventually under-mine it. Its relentless logic, at least in this area, is to explain by rationalmeans and empirical evidence phenomena that the religious mind infuseswith mystery and charisma. We have tried to show, however, that religiousawe before the universe and before our own place in it, particularly in asituation of global environmental change, cannot always be dismissed asoutright irrational.

Obviously, scientific disenchantment with ecoreligion will only happento the extent that further secularization affects other forms of religious life.And we know that secularization does not increase in a linear and un-broken manner. As a social practice of a myth, cosmic piety constitutes acharismatic expression of the rediscovery of nature, of the unknown effectsof current global environmental problems, and of human responses tothem. Nevertheless, once more, the rites and cults relating to ecoreligionare not completely irrational social constructions. They have contributedand are still contributing in an important way to international publicenvironmental awareness and even policies. Perhaps in a more strikingway than any other field of social action, global environmental problemsshow that communication and learning processes for attitudinal change arenot only about rational or goal-oriented secular discussions, but also aboutritual practices related to untestable beliefs, feelings and hopes. Cosmicpiety, because of its cognitive, educational and ideal character, which alsopresents alternative courses of action, has already demonstrated some posi-tive effects in conservation policies. There is no reason to assume that it willnot continue doing so in the near future. It may still be helping humansocieties in their quest to adapt their political, economic and cultural insti-tutions to the needs of global environmental change.

Ecoreligion has provided a decisive metaphysical and ethical com-ponent in the transformation of some political and private routines inindustrial societies. However, it also faces the challenge of furtherrationalization and disenchantment, as once described by Weber. Thus, itis often claimed that in order to address adequately the challenge of globalenvironmental change, we must overcome or ignore the kind of non-rational behaviour that ecoreligion converts tend to preach; that environ-mental problems should be defined in rational terms in which concretecauses, effects and solutions are correctly identified and efficiently tackled.But this, in the time being, if at all feasible, will only be possible for a


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restricted number of environmental problems. And only a relatively smallnumber of people will be able to act in that manner in each society.

Perhaps one day global ecological rationality, ethics and metaphysicswill be fully and finally incorporated into the everyday culture, mannersand lifestyles of large sectors of the world population. Should that come topass, the culture of ecoasceticism will begin to forget its ecoreligious roots.In the mean time, it is likely that cosmic piety or some equivalent practiceswill still be needed in order to contribute to the urgent task of changingcurrent social conditions in the direction of ecological adaptation.

Meanwhile, welcoming ecoreligious expressions of cosmic piety mightprove sensible, given the current cognitive constraints encountered in thetask of explaining, understanding and confronting the issues generated byglobal environmental change.

NotesWe would like to thank Professor José Prades and Professor Riley E. Dunlap fortheir comments.

1. Current theories about risk perception have not usually understood globalenvironmental change as an objective or real process affecting contemporarysocieties. Moreover, some of these theories have regarded environmentalactions as having an irrational content, which may be partly true. Yet, theapproach leaves out the exploration of rational action as based on risk percep-tion or social alarm. Likewise, global environmental change has beenconsidered to have a secondary role in their conclusions, tending to adopt astrong social-constructionist stance.

2. We do not wish to explore here the historical role supposedly played by certainreligions in bringing about the current environmental predicament – a line ofanalysis followed by Lynn White (1967) – or the ongoing debate about thereligious causes, if any, of the crisis. For a previous similar thesis to that of LynnWhite’s see Thomas (1983) and for a summary account of such debate, seeWatson and Sharpe (1993). From a religious point of view, see Hervieu-Léger(1993) and Collins (1995). We do not intend either to carry out a survey ofempirical sociological research related to religion and environmental issues.For this see Cardano (1995), Kearns (1996), Guth et al. (1995), Nelsen (1995) andEster and Seuren (1992).

3. In the Health of the Planet survey on the perception of environmentalproblems in 24 nations, Dunlap (1993) stated that ‘at the time of the 1972Stockholm conference environmental problems were often viewed as mainlyaesthetic issues or threats to the beauty of nature’ but now there is a growingawareness that they constitute threats to human health. In Dunlap’s (1994)view, this survey demonstrated a virtually worldwide awareness and con-sensus about the existence of environmental problems and the poor health ofthe planet; for a review of western cultural change towards ecological world-views, attitudes and values, see Olsen et al. (1992) and Tábara (1996).


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4. The persistence of more traditional forms of millenarianism – as in the case ofthe Jehovah’s Witnesses – alongside the new ‘end of the world’ doctrines putforward by the more apocalyptic intepretations of the ecological crisis showsthat the latter do not displace them entirely. Combinations of the two are adistinct possibility.

5. Some defenders of ecoreligion, ecophilosophy or ‘ecosophy’ claim that theirposition has meant the end of humanism, since it entails a vision of human-kind’s centrality in its own preoccupations. The issue, however, remains open.Their emphasis on humans’ behaviour towards, and wisdom (‘ecosophy’)about, their environment is too great for the outright dismissal of the possi-bility of an ‘ecohumanism’ or a humanism coherent with our times as well aswith the imperatives of the new natural consciousness. Humanism, it seems tous, has been discarded too lightly by some ecologist critics: the possibility thatthe very humanist tradition now questioned might have had much to do withthe rise of environmentalism and the ecological movement has not beenseriously contemplated. As often happens, polemics has taken its toll fromtruth. It remains to be proven that humanism (a tradition with many ramifi-cations and with ill-defined frontiers) is one of the chief culprits of the aggres-sion against the environment produced by industrial civilization. On the otherhand, Sessions’ unambiguous ‘charge’ that the conceptions of theorists such asTeilhard de Chardin or Buckminster Fuller are highly anthropocentric isobviously well founded. He is on more shaky ground when he extends this tothe New Age itself, considering that its notion of human ‘stewardship’ ‘seeshumans as acting as copilots of Spaceship Earth’ (Sessions, 1987: 119–20).

6. For a critique of this view, see Giner (1976).7. One of the central contemporary debates within the field of environmental

sociology can also be understood in terms of the intellectual tensions (whichalso arise within the public in general) between environmental believers,environmental agnostics and environmental atheists. To the sociologist interestedin global environmental change, the main questions concern whether environ-mental problems exist in reality or whether anything can be understood abouttheir objective nature and consequences to human societies. In this sense,Dunlap and Catton (1994) have argued that for sociologists to make substan-tial contributions to the understanding of global environmental change, weshould abandon the set of anthropocentric and exemptionalist assumptionsthat have characterized the discipline and its cultural background from itsorigins and move towards a new and completely revised ‘ecologicalsociology’. Their proposal could also be interpreted as an attempt to deepen(though in a secular way) the shallow character environmental sociology hasshown until the very present (see also Jones, 1990).

8. Christian theologist Dr P. Collins thinks that this ‘deep spiritual change . . . isalways a very difficult and painful process’ (Collins, 1995: 173) and that it is acondition for human salvation. In his view, ‘A real cosmological “conversion”has to occur. This will involve a deep interior change and the consequentmaking of a personal commitment. The result of this will be a strong sense ofbiological and existential identification with other living things and ultimatelywith the land and the earth itself’ (Collins, 1995: 174). He reckons that the


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environmental movement is already gathering a circle of ‘saints’ and ‘martyrs’comparable to those of the great religions. In his opinion, some environmentalleaders like Chico Mendes in the Brazilian Amazon demand a commitment,ascetic life and personal sacrifice that ‘suggest a sanctity that is remarkable’(Collins, 1995: 9).

9. On the political consequences of conversion, see Pizzorno (1993: 9–28).10. See Giner (1996) for an exploration of the rational components of charisma.11. René Dubos echoed this in 1972 during the United Nations Conference on the

Human Environment with his famous phrase ‘think globally, act locally’.However, many immediate difficulties arose when trying to apply this key ideato the world environment: today, many societies, even if they can ever affordto think globally, definitely act locally, though not always necessarily ‘eco-logically’; see Burningham and O’Brien (1994).

12. In Douglas and Wildavsky’s (1982) opinion, individuals cannot be aware of allthe risks that surround them nor can they be worried to the same degree aboutall of them. In their widely discussed interpretation, each society and eachgroup within each society chooses what risk they ‘want’ to perceive in orderto support or give coherence to their social relations, lifestyles or values.Among the three different cultures that they identified, environmentalproblems are more feared by the egalitarian culture which states that nature isfragile and bounded because this allows them to propose values such as soli-darity or the need to share natural resources in an equal way. Environmental-ists hold ‘pollution beliefs’ which are associated with the ideas of purity, guilt,victims and how to heal the impure. Despite the voluntary character of thoseorganizations, they viewed American environmentalism as an expression ofsectarianism; see also Dake (1992).

13. However, for the most sceptical, individual asceticism will not substantiallychange the structural causes of environmental degradation just because theroots of the problem are to be found in a treadmill of corporations whichseldom can be changed through personal actions (Schnaiberg, 1993). From thispoint of view, the ritual of recycling can be seen more as one of many indi-vidual communion activities that relieves one’s soul from cornucopian andnon-sustainable sins, but does not effectively transform social structures andadapt them to the requirements of global environmental change (and in thissense, less rational in relation to goals than to values).

14. Even for some ‘green’ thinkers, the process of rationalization of the world isthe root of the environmental crisis and, in this sense, the current concept ofsustainable development does not constitute any solution to it but more of thesame problem (Smith, 1996).

15. It is often believed that the cults and rites entailed in cosmic practices willproduce positive effects in the process of global environmental learning. In thissense, David W. Orr (1992) incorporates in his ‘Syllabus for EcologicalLiteracy’, a good number of subjects on religion and ethics and in particularsome headings on the ‘Epistemology of Wholeness’ and on the ‘Rediscoveryof the Sacred’.

16. However, contradictory opinions abound in relation to the virtues and risks ofecoreligion and ecomyths. Development economist and ecological atheist


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D. Lal sees in the ‘ecofundamentalism of the West’ a threat to world order morelikely to hit the economies of the ‘Rest’. In his view, western ecomorality whichvalues nature above humankind is a pathological response to the death of Godthat resulted from the western ‘rationalist Cartesian project’ whose ethics areno longer based in the revelations of the Holy Book (Lal, 1995).

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Biographical Notes: Salvador Giner and David Tábara are members of theInstitute of Advanced Social Studies (Spanish Higher Council of ScientificResearch).

Address: IESA, Egipcíaques, 15, 08001 Barcelona, Spain. [email: [email protected]]


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